


bend, but never break.

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, this is pretty much how my Inquisitor dealt with the solasmance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:59:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6428935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellana Lavellan is Dalish and proud, despite a few momentary lapses in judgement. These are her people, and she will fight to save the world that they have made their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bend, but never break.

The second time they kissed, he tasted like desperation. It wasn’t love, but rather the potential of love. Ellana knew this was a bad idea, but she’d always been one to think with her heart instead of her head. 

* * *

“I am Dalish! This is my culture, and I’ll be damned if I let it go to waste in some _shemlen's_ head. This is our history, and we will remember,” she snarled, pushing Morrigan aside. The Well called to her, and so she made it hers. 

* * *

When he took her back to Crestwood, this time just the two of them alone, Ellana wasn’t sure what she expected. It certainly wasn’t this, the shattering of whatever frail and fragile thing that had bloomed between them. In the heat of the moment, she allowed him to remove her vallaslin, and while she was mourning for what could have been love, she was mourning the loss of herself. 

* * *

She should have know. She should have fucking known that he was going to leave after the world was saved. When she returned to Skyhold, she suffered through the required pleasantries and then she went up to her room and she drank and drank until she was sick over the side of the balcony, and later she fell asleep outside, curled up against the railing. 

* * *

Three months later, Ellana Lavellan returned home. She talked to her Keeper, told the woman the bare minimum of the story, and she received her vallaslin once more. “For a moment,” she said, “I forgot who I am. Who we are.” 

* * *

Two years after the destruction of the Breach, Ellana finds Solas again. “I am no one’s agent but my own,” he says, and something in Ellana breaks at the new betrayal. She refuses to let it show, and she glares at him until she is forced to her knees with pain. He takes that away, too, and Ellana wonders how many more pieces he will chip away. “Your vallaslin. I removed it,” he says, the question written all over his face, and Ellana gives him a smile that’s all teeth. “I remembered what it meant to be Dalish. We are the last of the elvhen, and we are reclaiming our culture. Our heritage. We are ours,” she says, and an age-old anger lingers beneath her words, laced through her veins. She has faced many discriminations and disservices, and this was violation was the worst, perhaps because she had willingly allowed it. He leaves again, a short while later, and this time he has taken her arm too. She thinks she might have won, though. She has his heart and he owns nothing of her. She is fiercely and proudly her own, and nothing will ever take that away from her.

* * *

It takes her awhile to learn how to fight again, but slowly, Ellana does. _Bend, but never break,_ she tells herself, on those mornings when breaking seems like the only option. Instead, she endures. She fights, and she survives, because Ellana Lavellan has never been someone to admit defeat and destruction. She was one of the People; the last of the elvhen, and she had earned this right through blood. The world, she decided, was hers for the taking, and so she _took._  

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not happy with how this ends, but I'm happy with it overall. I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


End file.
